Class Time Teaches New Teachers

January 04, 1998|By Jody Temkin. Special to the Tribune. John K. McCarthy contributed to this story.

Paul Peterson believes that just telling his freshmen English students at Chicago's Lane Technical High School about writing doesn't get the message across in the same way as having them put pen to paper--or, these days, fingers to keyboard.

"I tell my students all the time, `You actually have to do it,' " he said of learning how to write.

The same is true of teaching, said Peterson, 28, who is in his third year at Lane Tech.

"Every year is like another trial period," he said. "I'm always looking back on what I did wrong and what I did right, and learning new things, based on my experiences."

Peterson received a master's degree in education from DePaul University, Chicago, in 1994, and recalls some of the most valuable learning was not what he read in books or heard in lectures but "the practical experiences, the observations, and just having the conversations with other grad students in education about their experiences.

"We had to have 100 observation hours, and then we did student teaching. I learned a lot from that hands-on work."

Many other new teachers agree. The more practical experiences they had while in college, the better prepared they felt. Now that they have their own classrooms full of children, they say they continue to learn more about how to teach each school year.

Amy VanEekeren, a 4th-grade teacher at Naperville's Beebe Elementary School, is in her second year of teaching. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996. She has noticed she has had to learn a host of little things on the job.

"Whether it's procedure, how to manage your time with the kids or to be flexible, there are so many things they don't teach you in college that you learn hands-on," said VanEekeren, 24.

"When you're a teacher, you're a counselor, a lawyer, a peacemaker. You're the mom, to some extent, and you're a nurse. Teaching is so much more than what it seems on the surface."

Although she has had to learn many things on the job, she gives high marks to the education she received at U. of I.

"I got an excellent education and had excellent professors," she said. "(But many) professors would teach us the theory and we'd take extensive notes and it was really informative, but that was it.

"When it came down to it, I needed to know some practical means to put into use. We needed more concrete measures to teach children."

VanEekeren recalls one of her most useful college courses being a math methods class, where the professor showed her specific, hands-on strategies for teaching math. She has used those in her two years of teaching and found them to be very effective.

"So many young children hate math," she said. "The way he taught us is amazing. It gets children interested. They use manipulatives to learn the concept so they're actually doing the concept and can see it. It works." Manipulatives are objects used for counting.

Several new teachers credit experienced fellow teachers with making their transition from student to new teacher easier. VanEekeren was in a team-teaching setup last year at Ogden Avenue School in La Grange, where she co-taught alongside another teacher.

"I learned a lot about different kinds of kids and dealing with different behaviors from her," she said. "I enjoyed that experience a lot because I learned so much."

Julie Depcik, a 2nd-grade teacher at Kirby School in Tinley Park, also is in her second year of teaching. She said she benefited from a mentoring program set up by her district, Kirby District 140. The district assigns an experienced teacher to each new teacher, to help with everything from showing the new teacher where the gym is, to answering questions about discipline.

Depcik, 25, a 1996 graduate of Chicago's St. Xavier University, said one of the strengths and also one of weaknesses of her college education came in special education.

In a university class about teaching special-needs children, she learned a lot about the paperwork demands in special education. Now, she knows why. "It ended up being very helpful," said Depcik, adding that she learned how to complete an individual educational plan for special-needs children, something she has had to do at Kirby.

She said she wishes, though, that she had learned more about how to teach the special-needs children who have been mainstreamed into her classroom.

"I was exposed to some of that in college, but I could have used more," she said.

"Sometimes, you modify the work for them, and I do a lot of small groupings so the higher level kids can help some of the other kids. You do the best you can."

Pam Duignan began teaching 1st grade at Chicago's Mt. Greenwood School in the middle of the 1996-97 school year, and this year has her own kindergarten class there. Like Depcik, she has found one of the challenges of teaching to be adjusting to the different ability levels of the children.